World of Karador
World of Karador is very different from the average Neverwinter Nights server. Most builders look at a world as a place where a lone city or two are surrounded by dungeons that seem to have no real significance. Karador focuses first on the kingdom of Lomar. It is a virtual kingdom comprised of several large interconnected cities, each supported by several small towns and communities. Lomar's borders are well defended and her roads patrolled. Within the kingdom, there is relative safety where all manner of character may go about their lives. Many different exclusive guilds exist where characters may pursue their professions and interests. Outside of the fortress protected kingdom however, all manner of danger awaits. A hostile wilderness surrounds the kingdom on every side. Countless monsters have dwellings and even civilizations of their own. Truly random monsters roam the country side searching for prey. There is plenty of danger to be found when the road you have walked a hundred times might always have an unexpected surprise awaiting upon it. Features CEP 2.4: Karador is a CEP world. PRC 3.5: '''The World of Karador has recently switched to the PRC. Many of the wonderful options are being implemented, with many more to come. The world of Karador also uses its own hak. '''Additional Player Races '''In addition to all the races that the Prc offers, the world of Karador also offers Chromatic and Metallic Dragons, True Lycanthrope Wereleopards, Hengeyokai, and Ogre Mages as player races. '''Pen and Paper Conversions: Karador has over a dozen classic pen and paper modules that have been converted to NWN. The List of conversions done include: B4 The Lost City, B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, B5 Horror on the Hill, B11 King's Festival, B12 Queen's Harvest, FRC1 Ruins of Adventure, G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King, L3 Deep Dwarven Delve, R1 To the Aid of Falx, S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, 9350 Assault on Raven's Ruin. With many more to come!. Setting: Karador is its own world filled with unique places, NPCs, organizations, kingdoms and guilds. Most players are very impressed with the depth of background that exists and love to learn the new plots which are unfolding behind the scenes. Most game play focuses around the Kingdom of Lomar and its struggles in a hostile fantasy world. Environment: Karador is a beautiful world. Characters can see much farther into the horizon than in most worlds, and wildlife is abundant. Trees, animals, and smaller plants give the constant impression of a living world. Among the effects most players are most impressed with is the darkness of night which is very pronounced in Karador. When dawn finally comes, most players take a deep breath of relief. Size: Karador is very large. The primary kingdom setting of Lomar consists of 4 cities, 5 forts and a dozen smaller towns, villages and guilds. Most new players are bewildered at how big the kingdom is and how much there is to do inside of it once they start looking around. New players will find that monsters do not lurk only moments from the inn. There is a quite expansive kingdom which is relatively peaceful in which characters can travel around and explore. Outside of the kingdom is much larger and far less safe. Spawns: Karador uses a very dynamic random spawn system. First of all, random spawns are in no way scaled by the level of the character triggering them. The world exists as it does regardless of the level of the player. Players need to be ever vigilant that an encounter far beyond their ability may lurk around every corner. Secondly, random groups can be as large as 25 members and consist of likely creatures that would be encountered together in a manner that makes sense. These random groups are truly random. You will constantly find different groups in different places. Though many areas have many encounters you can expect, you never know when a small orc army might be on the move, or a group or slavers camp as they move across the wilds. Monster difficulty: Monsters in Karador are harder than in most places. This has not been done by adding hit points, armor class or higher stats. Instead the monsters have some great AI scripting. They use spells and ranged combat better. Thieves, scouts and hunters use their hide skill and sneak up on players. Monsters see farther away and call for aid to their fellows more effectively. All of these things make for more challenging adventuring without the need to buff up creatures. XP & loot: Karador is a "low power" server. Both experience points and gold are hard won. We have built a world that does not require a level 20 character to travel to the best places. Low level characters, particularly in organized cooperative groups, will find themselves able to enjoy most of the world. There is a small xp bonus for exploring the world, which can be helpful to starting characters. Drops: Karador creatures are known for dropping the items they should. Monsters wearing armor and wielding two swords will drop all of those things. Nearly every monster drops something that can be used, and always something that makes sense. Rest: In Karador, rest is greatly limited to add a flavor of realism and difficulty. Rest conventions for the World of Karador are as follows. Rest is only allowed every 8 game hours. 1 game hour is 3 real minutes. Thus rest is allowed every 24 minutes. Food and Drink '''Rest requires both food and drink, and consumes them as part of that rest. Water Bottles when emptied can be refilled at a well or similar area where clean water can be found. Most food needs to be cooked before it can be consumed. It should be noted that True Lycanthropes must eat raw meat to rest. Dragons also have a feat that allows them turn any item into food. In General rest is allowed only in special areas without the use of the Survival skill. When you enter a general rest area, you will receive a message informing you of such. NPCs are a good source to learn rest locations, though many are obvious ( like inns). Resting only heals a character a limited amount of HPs. That amount is the character's level X 2 plus CON bonus. Resting may be possible outdoors with possession of either camping gear or Outdoor gear. Use of Camping Gear will create a campfire and a Tent that will all others '''Survival Skill '''The Survival feat/skill is a new addition to the world. With 5 points of survival a character can sleep outdoors in the wild. 10 points of survival will allow a character to rest underground in the wild. 15 points of survival will allow a character to rest in artificial areas like dungeons. 15 points of survival can also help you allow a party member sleep outdoors in the wild. 20 points of survival can help you, help a party member sleep underground in the wild. 25 points of survival can help you, help other party members in artificial areas. '''Healing: We have eliminated the standard healer's kits used in NWN. New healing items such as bandages, herbal poultices, tourniquets, trauma kits, disease remedy bags, surgery tools and toxin treatment kits have been included. Treatment effectiveness is determined by the healer's skill, and all of these healing items can be player-crafted with things found in the world. Players are also limited as to how frequently they can receive non-magical healing in a day between rest. Unconsciousness: Like most servers, we have a decent system that makes players unconscious with hit points (HP) between 0 and -10. Unconscious characters bleed 1 HP per turn, and have a fair chance to recover. Most times monsters will cease attacking a character who has fallen. PVP: Officially our world is set for full player vs. player. I do not want people to be mislead by this into thinking that we encourage fighting between players. We want to develop a world where players are generally cooperative, friendly and well intentioned towards each other. The world is set to "Full PvP" because we want more realistic and true to pen and paper representation of area of effect spells, traps, etc. Disease: In keeping with the theme of a difficult and somewhat "realistic" fantasy world, plague sweeps the land. Characters risk infection with vile diseases at every turn. It adds flavor, worry and the excitement that comes from the unexpected. Curses: Karador has a unique system developed by which characters can become cursed. Curses are for more then temporary attribute reduction. Curses last until removed and can be everything for narcolepsy to the dreaded curse of the four winds which periodically sweeps the victim up and deposits him at strange locations. Development: Karador is constantly being developed and expanded. The designer is constantly adding new material, and player suggestions are taken very seriously. If you want to try a world where you will see new things added every week, give Karador a try. Crafting: Karador has the standard NWN and CEP crafting systems implemented. In addition, Karador has it own custom systems for crafting everything from poisons, traps, potions, ammunition, food and healing items. Secrets: The world of Karador has lots of secrets that players will have to work hard to uncover and discover. Players who have been here for a year still occasionally uncover things they had never known before. Persistence Karador has a persistent banking, investment and message board system. We also have scripting that keeps persistence of player hit points and spell usage even across server resets. Map room: Among the greatest resources that we have provided for our players is the map room. The map room shows a detailed depiction of all parts of the kingdom and much of the surrounding area. Each area is well described such that players can research where they want their travels to take them. Friendly DMs: The DMs on Karador very much want to promote players adopting the server as their home. They see it as their job to help facilitate an enjoyable experience for the players. Classic areas: Recently a movement has begun to build adaptations of older classic AD&D modules into the world of Karador. Currently you can find the The List of conversions done include: B4 The Lost City, B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, B5 Horror on the Hill, B11 King's Festival, B12 Queen's Harvest, FRC1 Ruins of Adventure, G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King, L3 Deep Dwarven Delve, R1 To the Aid of Falx, S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, 9350 Assault on Raven's Ruin. With many more to come! More will surely come. Gameplay information Character names Character names must be historical, generic or fantasy genre appropriate. European names are most favored, but by no means required. Names of well known characters from literature, television, movies will not be allowed. Defamatory names will not be allowed. Not because I'm a politically correct nazi, but because their out of genre. Names may include titles which are reasonable for a characters class. "sir", "brother", and "prior". More grand titles such as "lord", "king", "cardinal", "governor" "sheriff" or "judge" are prohibited unless you have specific Game Master instruction to use such. Player vs. player The PvP setting of this mod is set to on. This is not intended to promote player vs. player conflict. I strongly encourage players to work cooperatively. The primary reason for the PvP setting is for spell effects being more realistic and similar to paper and pencil AD&D. "Grief killing", or killing of others for your own wants is not permitted. Grief killing or other murder for fun and profit will result in kick / ban. Killing / fighting of other players is only legal in 3 situations. 1) A "warrant" exists for the player in question. Warrants may be issued by players or NPCs who have law enforcement powers and titles such as "sheriff" and "judge". Warrants will be issued against players who establish a track record and history of theft and murder (murder of NPCs and theft from either PCs or NPCs... Murder of PCs results in kick / ban) and other in character unlawfulness. 2) A formal duel is agreed to by all parties involved and the fight takes place with the consent of all parties. 3) As a part of a "war". Wars occasionally break out between game factions. These wars are begun, moderated and ended by Game Masters only. Wars are basically adventures that Game Masters will occasionally run where players will be allowed to take up sides and fight players of the opposing side as part of campaign plot. Like duels, participation in wars will almost always be 100% voluntary. Time Time on this world server is closer to real time then most other servers or modules. In many NWN modules, 2 minutes of real time make for 1 hour of game time. Here we use a schedule of 3 real minutes per in game hour. Thus a day for characters on this server is about an hour and ten miniutes real time. Characters are only able to rest every 8 hours. These are 8 in game hours. This is about a 24 minutes in real time. Spell casters with only a small allotment of spells per day must be far more careful in there selection and use. Resting is also not the healing method of choice on this server. Travel and safety The module is very large. The module is not "The Legend of Zelda" or other such computer games where you have to grow in level and power to move further on into more dangerous areas of the game in a sort of linear way. Adventure areas are spotted all over the place. Small dangers are frequent, great evils generally must be sought out. The world at large is basically safe. Thousands of peasants make a living farming in the civilized parts of the kingdom, and moving from town to town along major roads in civilized areas has only minor risk. That is not to say that the occasional raider may not decide to sack a local farm for supplies and stumble across you in the process. Many areas as basically civilized and in them, get out and about, but keep your wits about you. Areas that don't show signs of civilization are another matter. Only the brave and foolish scout them blind. There are lots of hints about places. There will always be information available about places if you bother looking. If you see a place that catches your interest. Talk to local peasants or look for books in libraries. Better yet, Ask other adventures and travelers. May the roads be kind. Rest Rest in the world of Karador is a very serious issue. It governs so many important elements of the game, that its settings will greatly impact nearly every element of how the game progresses. In Karador, rest is greatly limited to add a flavor of realism and difficulty. Rest conventions for the World of Karador are as follows. Rest is only allowed every 8 game hours. 1 game hour is 3 real minutes. Thus rest is allowed every 24 minutes. Rest requires both food and drink, and consumes them as part of that rest. Rest is allowed only in special areas. When you enter them, you will receive a message informing you of such. NPCs are a good source to learn rest locations, though many are obvious ( like inns). Resting only heals a character a limited amount of HPs. That amount is the character's level X 2 plus CON bonus. Rest is not the great solution to healing it is traditional NWN. Most rest settings in NWN worlds make clerics useless. Furthermore, resting on demand takes most challenge from the game. It is not uncommon to see players fight, take 30 seconds to rest, get all spells and HPs back, just to charge the next encounter. Conservation, care, tactics, strategy and teamwork are a must. You can not simply rest yourself back to full power at any small break in the action. This has a ramification on spell casters by limiting their access to magic. It also limits warriors by restricting their ability to recover HPs. Both will find other elements that balance and contribute to game enjoyment as play progresses. This server has been established for the enjoyment of people looking for a difficult, challenging experience similar to that of traditional paper and pencil game. Monster spawns There are three general types of monster spawns you will find on this server. First - "Prime Spawns"- These creatures / NPCs don't actually spawn at all. They are placed in the module and are there from the moment the server goes up. Most of these spawns are NPCs, and if killed, won't re-appear. There are also some powerful rare monsters which are unique and wont simply keep reincarnating. Don't worry there scarcity will only make them all the more impressive if your ever unfortunate enough to encounter them. And.. Your more likely to say " thank God the Lord of the Pit isn't here now" rather than.. "Now where has that Lord of the Pit gotten off to". Second - " Standard Spawns"- These creatures represent creatures in areas infested with there ilk. Kill them off and soon more will move back in. These are likely the creatures that players will see most. Spawns of this kind appear far off from trigger locations or aren't trigger activated at all. Monsters will not mysteriously appear around you. They also tend to wander a bit which populates zones nicely. Also unlike other servers, "Standard Spawns" repopulate relatively slowly. They take a long time to re appear. Nothing worse than slaughtering a tribe of goblins only to have them back when you wake up from a nap. This is to simulate that areas which are cleaned tend to stay safe for some time and to promote PCs exploring new fantastic places rather than fighting the same spawn over and over in a Valhalla like eternal struggle. Third - "Random Spawns" - The World often populate areas with random creatures periodically appearing in random locations. These random spawns will generally pop in a zone far away from PCs... and roam around doing there own thing until they and PCs meet. Though these random spawns will never grossly out of place, there's always the chance to bump into the unexpected. Here is a very important point about my opinions on monster spawns. Spawns do not modify themselves at all based on level of the PCs. There treasure does not changes based on level of PCs or how many people in the party. What's there is there and it's there because that what I think should be there. All the orks do not magically become ork champions simply because a high level party is moving about. If killing orks is becoming boring for your level 20 character.. Stop stomping around the ork kingdom. If your level 1 character gets ambushed by a group of trolls.. Perhaps you should have asked what kinds of critters are known to dwell in the are you are going to. 'Death Dying and Respawning' Death comes to a player at -10 HPs. Between 0 and -10 we use a bleeding system and PCs may still be healed back to health. There is also a rather generous chance of stabilization in this PW. Death'Once a PC dies... his body and a substantial amount of blood and gore will fall to the ground. All possessions the character had on his person when he died can be found among the gore. These can be looted by any person who chooses to dig a bit. The gore itself will fade in about 5 minutes, but gear will be left behind alone for sometime thereafter. When a PC is dead they are given the option of waiting for help. They may wait as long and as many times as they wish. As long as the spirit remains hopeful, the body shall remain and a cleric has the chance to bring the dead back to life. If the spirit of the dead desires to "respawn" and travel to the hereafter, that is his choice as well. Once the choice to respawn has been made an appropriate body item will be left with his former gear that is the correct weight for race and sex for the character. It is possible for the friends of the party member to carry his body to a high level cleric for resurrection or if they find the means themselves to cast resurrection or raise dead upon that body itself to restore the spirit to the body. In the Hereafter what the spirit faces is unknown but for the dead to again walk the world of the living comes at great cost '''Respawning ' A player who respawns goes to the afterlife and must find his way back to life through deed, wits, or will. Doing so will take the pc to a tomb far from where his body was left. The PC pays a progressive penality of 50 times the amount of times he has died in xp costs for each respawning with no upper limit. If a player is near a major city, the player might find a hand out and some food at a mission for the poor. 'Raise Dead Spell ' Casting raise dead on a pc or casting it it on the dropped body item if they respawned, costs the dead pc 30 times the total lifetime amount of times the character has died in xp '''Resurrection Dead Spell Casting Resurrection on a pc or casting it it on the dropped body item if they respawned, costs the dead pc 15 times the total lifetime amount of times the character has died in xp 'True Resurrection ' costs no xp but the death still counts for future costs to raise from the dead. 'Playing weird things in the world'The first thing to know about the world of karador is that it will be assumed that your creature character has some reason that the population does not hunt him down with pitchforks and torches. In the future there will likely be a different starting area for hostile monsters but that is a little way off. The reasons can be your own but until such time as we have a monster starting area it would be considered polite to not run around burning villages and attacking commoners. 'ECL.'The Second thing to know is that Karador uses ECL Equivalent Character Level and Racial Hit Dice. What is ECL? When your character kills something there is a formula that determines how much xp your character should get based upon several factors including how big your party size is and what level your character is. ECL adds to your characters total level when it comes to xp rewards. So if you are playing a 3rd level fighter who has an ecl of a 2 your total level for considering xp rewards would be 5th level. It should be noted that quest rewards are not affected by ecl. 'Racial Hit Dice.'It should also be noted that some creatures have racial hit dice, meaning that class levels have to be spent to represent the inherent racial abilities of the class. You can not take a 2nd level in any other class until this requirement is met. If you were to play an ogre fighter and they have a racial requirement of 4 levels of giant class, you would have to 4 levels of giant before you could take your 2nd level of fighter. For some races this may seem a burden because of the inherent weakness of those generic classes, but for some like the dragon classes it is needed to show the age progression. Summoned beasts and familiars In this PW, the summoning spells are made to act more like those described in traditional paper and pencil AD&D (or D&D3E to you newbies). Summoned creatures only last for a minute or so of real time. This extends a bit based on caster level. Summoned animals were never intended as an additional party members. Unlike other mods, I have not tried to replicate durations down to simply a couple melee rounds. Summoning spells should be useful, but not over powering. Familiars are very important to protect. Familiars can only be healed by feeding once every 8 hours.